Scott McNulty

Kindle 2.6 for iPhone and iPad now displays "real page numbers," which Amazon has been adding to a large number of e-books available from the Kindle Store.

As you might recall, Amazon recently posted a software preview for the latest generation of hardware Kindles which added real page numbers support, and promised to add this feature to its mobile Kindle apps shortly.

Look under the end table in my living room, and you'll find one facet of my Mac backup strategy: a 1 TB Time Capsule. My Mac mini, Mac Pro, and MacBook all happily back themselves up, via the magic of Time Machine, to this hidden Time Capsule--I don't even need to think about it.

The only hitch here is that the Time Capsule also does double duty as my networking hub, so my precious backups are stuck with my computers--in an ideal world one should store backups in a remote location. Dalamser's TimePreserver can help here, as this handy utility copies Time Machine backups from your Time Capsule to an external drive--it makes a backup of your backups, if you will--which you can then store separately from the Time Capsule itself.

Amazon has posted a preview version of an upcoming software update for their latest generation Kindles (both the Wi-Fi-only and 3G + WiFi models). Version 3.1 adds a number of new features, but Amazon is crowing about three in particular: public notes, real page numbers, and an improved newspaper and magazine layout.

When you enable Public Notes, all the notes you enter on your Kindle are shared with people who follow you on Amazon's Kindle site. The concept of following people on the Kindle is also new, but apparently Amazon really wants to make reading on a Kindle a social experience.

The Google eBookstore is the most recent entrant in the crowded e-book market, taking its place amongst such high-profile rivals as Amazon's Kindle Store, Barnes & Noble's Nook store, and Apple's iBookstore. But while the Google eBookstore certainly has a "Googly" design aesthetic, is it enough to convert e-book lovers to Google customers?

If you've downloaded an e-book in the last year, the Google eBookstore will look very familiar. You'll find a list of bestsellers, some graphics promoting different books, and a number of categories of e-books for your enjoyment. E-book pricing is in line with the emerging industry standard, ranging from free classics to about $10 for bestsellers and a couple of bucks north or south of that for back catalog books.

Amazon has spilled the beans on two new upcoming features for the Kindle: e-book lending, and periodical reading in apps.

The most exciting news is that before the year ends, you'll be able to lend e-books to your Kindle-using friends (and they to you). The lending works in much the same fashion as Barnes & Noble's LendMe e-book lending works: you can lend a book to a friend (or enemy, if you so choose) for 14 days. Sounds cool, but there are a couple of things to be aware of: during those 14 days, the original owner of the book can't read it (which makes sense to me, since it's the same with a physical book) and you can only lend each book once (which is kind of lame, if you ask me). Publishers will be able to enable, and disable, lending on a book by book basis, much like the Text-to-Speech feature of the Kindle. So we'll have to wait and see how useful and widespread the feature actually is.

Kindle for Mac, Amazon's Mac application that allows you to read Kindle e-books on your computer, has been updated and given a fresh coat of paint.

Amazon's updated reader now lets you add and edit notes and highlight passages, both of which are synced across all Kindle devices and apps using the company's Whispersync technology. This update also includes the ability to search within a book, a much-requested feature. Multi-column reading mode, which was just added to the iOS Kindle apps, makes its debut on Kindle for Mac with this release as well.

Amazon's e-book strategy seems to consist of two parts: Let users buy once and read anywhere (thanks to the company's legion of Kindle apps), and push the Kindle--and Kindle editions of books--as much as humanly possible.

The recently announced Kindle for the Web falls solidly in the latter part of Amazon's strategy. Kindle for the Web allows you to read the first chapter of any book that has a Kindle edition right in your browser. You can change font sizes, adjust the line spacing, determine how many words per line you'd like, and choose from three different color modes (white, sepia, and black).

Many are proclaiming the iPad a Kindle killer--but it seems no one told Amazon. The e-book vendor updated its free Kindle app to add compatibility for the iPad, and it's now available for your reading pleasure. And since the Kindle app is Universal, the same app will run on both iPhones and iPads.

The iPad version of Kindle includes a spiffy page-turning animation (why should Apple have all the page-turning fun?) as well as an option to turn off the animation (for which I thank the Amazon developers kindly). The library view on Kindle for the iPad displays large thumbnails of the books you have available to read and is both scrollable and pinchable.

You're listening to NPR...on your iPad. That's right, National Public Radio has an iPad application ready and waiting for your listening (and reading) pleasure and it's in the App Store now.

NPR for iPad uses a magazine-style layout to focus on the news, music, and lifestyle content that NPR prides itself on. Plus you can listen to over 1,000 live streams and playlists, right from your iPad.

The morning of March 12, 2010, I roused myself from a deep slumber a little before 8:20 a.m. Wiping the sleep from my eyes, I walked to my Mac Pro and began to refresh the Apple store over and over again. Yes, like many other Mac writers and Mac fans, I awoke to pre-order an iPad so I would be certain to have one on April 3.

In my weary and blurry state I saw two delivery options: normal shipping or expedited shipping for a mere $12. Given the fact that I set an alarm to awake up so I could pre-order a device sight unseen (and untouched), it seemed ridiculous not to splurge on faster shipping, so I ponied up the extra 12 bucks.

Don't your arms get a little tired from holding your iPad all day long? OK, so no one, outside of a chosen few, have experienced iPad-fatigued appendages as of yet, but you know it's coming. If you want to be prepared--and who doesn't--the BookArc for iPad may be for you.

The BookArc for iPad, much as you might guess from Twelve South's BookArc, is a minimalist stand for your iPad that allows you to plunk the device down on a counter or desk, so you can use it without having to cradle it in your arms like a newborn foal. The stand is arched, so you can still connect the power cable to your iPad for charging, and you can slip the iPad into the BookArc oriented either in landscape or portrait mode.

It seems that everyone has their favorite app launcher/wonder app these days whether it be LaunchBar, Quicksilver, or Butler. If you still haven't found the app launcher for you, and you enjoy bowler hats, might I suggest you check out Alfred?

Now in beta, Alfred (something tells me the developers are fans of Batman) allows you to launch applications and search the Web, Amazon, IMDB, and more all with a few keystrokes. Assign a hotkey combination, and pressing those keys will bring up a query window. Type in the first few letters of the application you want to launch, or use a keyword to perform a Web search, and you're off. Alfred will drop down results as they are found. If the first result is the one you're looking for just hit return, and it is launched. If what you're looking for is further down the list of results, Alfred very helpfully assigns a specific command key combination to each result. (The combos start at Command + 1 and go from there.)